United Launch Alliance is preparing for its next Vulcan launch, what will be the first official national security mission for the new rocket.

A joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ULA will conduct several launches for the government and then turn back to its big commercial customer, Amazon, in the fall.

CEO Tori Bruno says the recent public spat between the president and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

highlights the need for competition.

All of that just really highlights how important it is for the country to have a broad

industrial base.

And of course to have competition, that's always good.

But multiple providers, there can be anything, you know, that can cause you to want to have either more surge capacity or just alternatives.

When things are going on, this just puts a highlight on that, especially with the pressure put on the infrastructure by the commercial Leo marketplace that's developed.

They're there now with Starlink.

We are also now there with Kuiper and Amazon, and those are only going to grow.

And then on top of that, we have future demands for Golden Dome, for example.

On this episode, ULA's Tori Bruno shares the latest launch forecast for the company, previews Amazon's Kuiper satellite service, and weighs in on the big and growing need to better secure space.

I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space.

Let's start with the latest at ULA.

What do you have afoot, especially as everybody's awaiting your first official national security launches with Vulcan?

Well, it's really exciting this year. We've got Vulcan certified. We're about to fly our first national security space missions.

We've started flying for Amazon Kuiper on Atlas. And so we're sort of champing at the bid here to get going.

Do you have a next launch planned? Is there a date?

We do. So we'll fly very soon. The customer hasn't announced the date yet, so I can't say, but really, really soon.

We'll fly a Space Force mission. We'll follow that with two more,

and then we'll pivot back to Amazon and fly Vulcan for them in the fall.

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